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Day: April 20, 2011

The abortion-loving crowd is at it again. Giving out misleading information about why women – in particular poor black women – have abortions. And in the process, they hold the black community to different standards than white people when it comes to sex education, pregnancy, and abortion. The Chicago Tribune reports on a so-called “controversial” pro-life billboard targeted towards black people – one of several that have gone up across the country – that has area pro-aborts up in arms, and trying to refute the rationale behind the billboards:

When a Texas minister came to Chicago last month to launch a controversial anti-abortion billboard campaign, he highlighted a statistic that some people found shocking.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women account for about 36 percent of the country’s reported abortions, even though blacks are less than 13 percent of the population.

So why is the black abortion rate, which is three times that of white women, so disproportionately high?

Experts say it’s because black women have higher rates of unintended pregnancies, and often that’s a result of not having access to quality health care as well as the most effective contraception and sex education.

This makes no sense. They have “no access” to “quality health care” and “effective contraception” but they do have access to various “free” clinics which supposedly offer “quality repro care” – including “effective contraception” to women – right? Let’s not forget that the local convenience store probably sells condoms, too ..

Next:

Gaylon Alcaraz, the executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said the statistics tell only part of the story.

“The abortion rate doesn’t talk about the high rate of sexual violence, such as rape and molestation, in poor black communities,” Alcaraz said. “It doesn’t tell you about the woman whose birth control failed or the college student who wants to finish school.

“Then there’s the woman who sneaks out to get an abortion so she doesn’t have to bring another baby into a house where the husband is beating her.”

Cherisse Scott, health educator for the Chicago-based Black Women for Reproductive Justice, said the rate also doesn’t address the overall racial disparities in health care and health outcomes.

“We know that black women are more likely to suffer or die from diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS,” Scott said. “Life Always (the Texas-based group responsible for the ads) would like you to believe that the high abortion rate is not complicated and merely the result of aggressive marketing from abortion providers. But that’s just untrue.

“They believe black women have been bamboozled by Planned Parenthood, as if (the organization is) standing on every street corner in every black neighborhood promoting abortion.”

Nope. What they believe is that Planned Parenthood takes advantage of vulnerable poor black women via the “counselors” at PP suggesting to black women that abortion really is the best way to solve all of their problems. But let’s just assume for purposes of discussion that pro-life groups did believe black women have been “bamboozled” by PP. Is that any worse than the apparent assumption by apologist pro-aborts that poor black women, in a nutshell, don’t know how babies are made? I mean, if they don’t have access to “quality” sex education nor “quality” health care (neither of which are true, btw), I guess they really don’t understand that when a man and a woman have unprotected sex that the woman is going to get pregnant? Seriously? Is this also true for the poor black (and white, for that matter) women who already have one baby or more? Wonder how pro-aborts try to explain this one away, especially considering that according to the Planned Parenthood-affiliated Guttmacher site – page 12, the majority of abortions (6 out of 10 – page 28) that happen in this country are had by women who’ve already had one baby or more. Not only that, but – again according to Guttmacher – 58% of abortions are had by women over 20, and 17% are aged 15-19. Needless to say, these are the ages where women well-know what the consequences of casual sex are.

Next:

Rebecca Wind, spokeswoman for Guttmacher, said that one persistent reason for unintended pregnancies is that many women of color, who are also disproportionately low-income, are less likely to use the most effective methods of contraception. Such methods include the birth control pill, the patch, the vaginal ring and intrauterine devices.

“What’s left out of the discussion is that black women are more likely to experience unintended pregnancies and therefore more likely to seek and obtain abortions than any other group,” Wind said.

She said that because black women also are underinsured, they may be more vulnerable, since the most effective methods are often the most expensive.

But Scott said the problem goes even deeper. Many of the women and girls she encounters don’t have a good understanding of their basic reproductive and sexual health. She said many don’t even know how to chart their menstrual cycles.

What age group is the most likely to not know how to “chart their cycles”? Young teens under 15, who account for – wait for it – less than 1% of all abortions in this country, again – according to Guttmacher (page 25).

“It doesn’t matter if there’s yet another form of a contraceptive method if a woman doesn’t know how to use it properly,” Scott said.

Notice something about this article? There is not ONE mention of black men. Not one mention of the fact that it’s just as easy for a black man to buy a box of condoms at the local store for under $5 as it is a black woman (and why would supposed “lack of access” to more sophisticated forms of BC be a factor in abortions when condoms are readily available for purchase just about everywhere?). Typically when pro-aborts talk about abortion, it’s in the (implied) context of a white woman deciding whether or not to abort their child, and the usual argument is to rail against white men and their “failure” to protect the woman from pregnancy, rather than put any responsibility on the woman for her failure to protect herself. Yet here, not only are pro-aborts typically absolving the woman of any responsiblity (“if only she had access to xyz!” when, in fact, she does), they’re not putting any responsiblity at all on the other party in the pregnancy, either.

Why is that? They have no problem attempting to stigmatize and broad brush all white men who don’t use BC, but yet are hesitant to do so when it comes to black men. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there …

And finally, this gem – yet another one from the Dept. of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up:

Dorothy Roberts is the author of “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty” and a Northwestern University professor who has examined attempts throughout history to regulate black women’s reproduction.

She said she wonders if the black-white disparity in the abortion rate is exaggerated because the numbers for white women having the procedure have been undercounted. (Some states, including California, don’t report abortion statistics to the CDC.)

“It doesn’t mean that black women aren’t having abortions at higher rates,” Roberts said. “But if you are wealthy and middle-class, you can be more private about reproductive decisions because you can have a procedure done by a private doctor.

“And if you pay cash, you don’t even have to engage your insurance. But poor women often go to public hospitals and clinics, and their reproductive behavior is under surveillance and can be more easily detected.”

She said a billboard that Life Always put up in New York — it had the message, “The most dangerous place for African-Americans is in the womb” — was reminiscent of the eugenics movement and population-control policies, which deemed black women as sexually irresponsible and incapable of making good reproductive decisions.

Oh, good grief! This woman has a lot of audacity claiming some pro-life link to the eugenics movements of the past, considering that liberal “feminist” hero and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a strong proponent of … eugenics. Against black people.

Hey, I don’t make up the stats and facts – I just point ‘em out, folks.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for nothing, BTW, Chi-Trib. Your attempt to “educate” the masses on the “real reasons” why the abortion rate in the black community is so high failed miserably.

Hey, you know those twisty compact fluorescent bulbs we’re being “encouraged” to buy because incandescents are so evil? You know, the light bulbs that are going to save the planet, because they’re (begin pious look) sustainable (sigh wistfully, end pious look)?

A compact fluorescent light (CFL) on the ceiling burst and started a fire in a home in Hornell, N.Y. December 23, 2010. “Those are the lights everybody’s been telling us to use,” said Joe Gerych, Steuben County Fire Inspector. “It blew up like a bomb. It spattered all over.” Fire Chief Mike Robbins said the blaze destroyed the room where the fire started and everything in it, and the rest of the house suffered smoke and water damage. The Arkport Village Fire Department as well as the North Hornell Fire Department required about 15 minutes to put out the fire.

“Bulb explodes without warning,” reported NBCactionnews.com, May 21, 2010. “Tom and Nancy Heim were watching TV recently, when Tom decided to turn on the floor lamp next to his recliner chair. ‘I heard this loud pop…I saw what I thought was smoke, coming out of the top of the floor lamp,’ says Tom. Nancy suddenly found glass in her lap. She says, ‘I did not see it. I just heard it, and I noticed I had glass on me.'”

On February 23, 2011, TV NewsChannel 5 in Tennessee covered “a newly-released investigators’ report that blames a February 12 fatal fire in Gallatin on one of those CFL bulbs.” Ben Rose, an attorney for the rehabilitative facility in which Douglas Johnson, 45, perished, said, “This result is consistent with our own private investigation. …We have heard reports of similar fires being initiated by CFLs across the country.”

Read the whole thing, and remember to ask your congressman and state legislator, who are probably so proud of how “green” they are, why they are trying kill you.

Standard and Poor’s recently issued a warning about the credit rating of the United States of America(1). While they tried both to downplay its significance and argue that the warning paradoxically means we have to take on more debt, the truth is that the Obama administration knew this was coming and that it was bad news, because they tried to talk S&P out of it:

The Obama administration privately urged Standard & Poor’s in recent weeks not to lower its outlook on the United States — a suggestion the ratings agency ignored Monday, two people familiar with the matter said.

Treasury Department officials had been discussing with S&P whether the ratings agency should change its outlook on the United States to “negative” from “stable,” an indication that the country could lose its crucial AAA rating in coming years over its soaring debt levels.

Treasury officials told S&P analysts that they were underestimating the ability of politicians in Washington to fashion a compromise to curb deficits, a Treasury official said. They argued a change in ratings was not needed at this time because the debt was manageable and the administration had a viable plan in the works, the official said.

But S&P analysts told Treasury officials on Friday that they were unmoved — and released a report that expressed skepticism that the political parties could come together on how to bring spending in line with revenue.

One wonders if that “skepticism” was expressed via peals of uncontrolled, mocking laughter.

Ed Morrissey examines the faulty assumptions behind Treasury’s claims(2), as well as the drop in consumer confidence following the warning that should have Obama and Geithner worried, but I want to look at another angle.

Ask yourself this: Why did the administration go quietly to S&P to ask for forbearance? Sure, the obvious answer is that a warning would shake markets’ confidence and possibly lead to higher interest costs for the US (read: “us”). But, frankly, the sorry state of US finances, the irresponsible spending and borrowing of the Democrats, and the “plans” of the administration have been long known by anyone paying attention and not smoking a pipe full of Hopium. S&P’s notice is a trailing indicator, an alarm that sounds after the fire has broken out, not an early warning.

But, what other reason could there be? Oh, yeah, there’s an election coming, and the president has just started campaigning for another four years of selling us down the river bringing us Hope and Change. The last thing he needs is some respected agency announcing to the world in a way that can’t be ignored that Obama cannot be trusted with the nation’s finances.

And there I think is the main reason Treasury was sent on its knees to beg for more time: not to avoid spooking the markets, which already know how bad things are, but to keep the vast unaligned middle of American voters, who maybe haven’t made the connection yet between “Obama” and “fiscal train wreck,” from having the blinders ripped from their eyes, getting mad, and taking it out on The One.

In other words, it was meant to hide the truth from us, the citizens, the one group of people with the power to fire Obama. And that truth is that we are being indebted into national penury by a group of economic incompetents who are now acting like little kids who’ve been caught doing something bad and beg the one who caught them not to tattle.

2012 cannot come fast enough.

TANGENTS:

(1) In my life, I never -ever- thought I would have to write those words.

(2) Seriously? They expected S&P to take the word of the man who admitted he screwed up Turbo-Tax?